Word: marathonical
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...nation that didn't formally exist until two years ago. In September 1999, hundreds of East Timorese civilians were killed and one-quarter of the population sent into temporary exile during a rampage by Indonesian anti-independence militias. When news of a massacre spread, Agueda Fatima Amaral, a marathoner who constitutes half of East Timor's Olympic contingent, gathered up a couple of suitcases under her arms, balanced a sack of rice on her head and joined the thousands running for their lives. Behind her, she could hear gunfire, but Amaral refused to glance back?just as she had trained...
...flag. This time around, as she represents her nation for the first time, Amaral is hoping for a better finish than her 43rd place in Sydney. But the 32-year-old runner is not sure she'll even be competing. Although her airfare, as well as that of fellow marathoner Gil Da Cruz Trindade, was paid by the International Olympic Committee, funds that had been raised in Australia for their pocket money have mysteriously gone missing. Sitting in a caf? in the Olympic Village and hesitating over the price of bottled water, Amaral isn't sure she'll be able...
...that of another Chinese hurdler, Shi Dongpeng, who placed fifth at the Zagreb meet?could finally help correct the nation's lackluster track record. In Sydney, China won just one track medal, and that came in the less glamorous sport of racewalking. Japan has a proud history in the marathon, but the klieg lights are far brighter in the sprinting events, and success in Athens would further electrify a nation already riding high on the exploits of exported baseballers, such as Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki, who have proved that in addition to precise pitching, Japanese can also smack...
...what was the premodern equivalent of Woodstock, the Super Bowl and a suburban key party. In their 2004 bid, the Greeks promised not just to reference their history but also to re-create it. The shot-put event would be staged amid the ruins of ancient Olympia; the marathon course would retrace the doomed steps of Phidippides and end with a triumphant lap around Panathinaiko Stadium, site of the first modern Olympics in 1896. And those Games went swimmingly. There were 311 participating athletes (men only). Cost to the host...
...shipping tycoon and an impeccable instinct for knowing when to scare or seduce her adversaries, she somehow persuaded the government, which oversees all public works and Olympic construction in Greece, to begin a desperate game of catch-up on 138 Olympics-related infrastructure projects. "It was like running the marathon," she recalls, "at a sprinter's pace...